A frontier with a proven record
Block 2020a, offshore Sierra Leone, sits in a conjugate twin of the Guyana basin — one of the most prolific oil frontiers discovered this century. The opportunity was clear; the challenge was to characterize a vast offshore area without an expensive, open-ended drilling and seismic campaign.
Three remote stages
An ERS workflow was run in three phases: multisensor satellite imaging to map hydrocarbon anomalies across the full block, followed by targeted NMR and point electromagnetic acquisition over the most promising areas. Coverage was narrowed from 4,000 km of candidate 2D lines down to roughly 1,000 km of focused acquisition.
Validated by a third party
The findings were independently verified where it mattered most: the Competent Person's Report was issued by Ryder Scott, not by Inside Earth. It assessed a P50 of 8.4 TCF plus 234 million barrels. Subsequent DHI studies revealed an additional 693 million barrels across two lead clusters.
Characterize it fully before the next meter of seismic.
The takeaway
Compared with a seismic-only program, the remote-first approach turned an open exploration problem into a ranked, drill-ready portfolio in a fraction of the time, supported by independent figures.
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